-Ospeed

I've noticed that with some things I work on, I can actually get a lot of benefit by just giving myself less time to work on them. I'm not talking about Parkinson's Law, that scary enabling vehicle for chronic underestimators everywhere, just an observation that for some tasks I paradoxically seem to get better results and enjoy the work more when I have less time to do it in.

Having reflected on this a bit, I think it's to do with a terrible addiction to optimisation. When I have a bunch of options - like say, a menu at a restaurant - it takes a lot of time to sort through all of them because I'm trying to optimise for the best result. One way to fix that is by limiting the number of the options on the menu. But another, more practical way is to restrict the amount of time I have. That way I'm now optimising for the best result I can get in 5 seconds. A much more tractable problem!

As applied to work, I think there are many cases where you don't need the best solution, just a good enough solution. The time restriction can often make you focus on getting that good solution without worrying about whether there's a better one. And less time optimising also means less time until you get results, which shortens your feedback loop and gives you better information to make decisions with.